Should Democrats be looking for a better candidate?

June 15, 2015

If she stays in, Hillary is a slam dunk to win the Democratic primary nomination at this point, no matter how the polls say that the majority of the country feels about her. Democratic primaries are pretty consistently won by the candidates that most closely adhere to the more extreme ends of the party base.

So if the goal is to win the primary, then her party should continue to back her.

If the goal is to win the general election, it might be wise to start looking for someone else.

So far, Mrs. Clinton herself is using the tried-and-true Democratic tagline that big government can provide anything you want better than you can provide it for yourself. But that message is being absorbed by the continuing questions about trust and honesty.

If you are a voter, you have to ask yourself…will the barrels of money she is promising to spend or the programs she says she will start suddenly disappear when she doesn’t need her voter base anymore?

Some people can lie so convincingly that even their most ardent detractors have a hard time convincing the merely skeptical that the lie is actually a lie. Others just shovel the BS on with a backhoe and hope it smothers all debate.

When Bill Clinton goes on national TV and says that neither he or Hillary knew who was donating to their foundation, he apparently doesn’t understand that 1998 wasn’t so long ago that no one is alive to remember it. Denials have to be at least somewhat plausible.

Denying that one or both of the founders of the charity never looked at a donor list, or at least didn’t recognize any names as problematic is asking us to severely stretch credulity, particularly since those same donors were paying some very good money for a one-hour speech.

Charities and their boards have been charged criminally and civilly for far less egregious errors of omission and commission, leaving one to wonder why the IRS hasn’t weighed in on the issue as yet.

Add to that the unanswered questions about the use of a private server to handle the public’s business while Hillary was Secretary of State and the failure to report many donations on 990-PF tax filings, and you’ve planted a picture in many people’s minds.

That picture is one of a desire to skirt the very edges of the law, a history of hiding important things from the people that want and need to know about them, and the ability to break oaths and promises any time it is personally or politically expedient to do so.

It sort of becomes a case of whether you were lying then, or are you lying now?

Although they don’t get a lot of play there are at least two other somewhat viable candidates on the Democratic side.

Of those two, Martin O’Malley is the more centrist. Bernie Sanders has a wide appeal to the hard left, more socialist wing of the party. And of course there’s still Elizabeth Warren, although as long as Mrs. Clinton stays in she is unlikely to let anyone draft her.

It’s highly likely that given the investment by big donors so far, Mrs. Clinton will be on the ticket in the primary election. But given circumstances and revelations to date, you have to wonder if there is a back-up plan.

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